Bhutanese students happy, bold and at home

PORTLAND – With a student body that speaks 52 languages, David Douglas High School frequently witnesses young immigrants walk the high wire between respecting tradition and embracing this crazy new place, Portland. The journey can knock loose anger, sadness, confusion.

But from the Bhutanese Student Club, another emotion arises.

Happiness.

“To live as a refugee was really hard,” said senior Narayan Lamichhane, 19, who came to the United States in August 2008. “We are happy to get rid of that. We’re really, really proud. We will have citizenship after five more years. We are happy to come here. It is the beginning of our human life.”

This past spring, half a dozen Bhutanese students went to English teacher Anne Downing and asked to form a club. The school’s clubs organize in autumn, but the students were so persistent the administration said OK.

The club members immediately applied for and won a $950 city grant for an art show. Then they set up a table for the school’s International Bite festival to serve savory samosas their parents made. Nearly every buyer asked, “Where’s Bhutan?” and a club member pointed to a tiny spot on a map on the eastern shoulder of India south of Tibet.

They made $200 in less than an hour.

In October, the young women of the Bhutanese Student Club put on their native dress and danced the dances of their homeland for a student assembly. The gym thundered with applause. The next day, the club raised Bhutan’s red-and-yellow flag of the Thunder Dragon at school to celebrate the holiday Dashain Tika, which also featured the art show paid for with the grant.

“I’ve never seen such determination,” Downing said. “They believed they needed this club, not just for themselves, but for their little brothers and sisters and for the other kids who are landing here.”

Oregon’s Bhutanese community didn’t exist three years ago. Today, it numbers about 400, most settling in the David Douglas school district. Dates of arrival in the United States are stamped in memory like a birthday.

“You’re never going to forget that day,” said senior Birkha Chuwan, 18. His day is Feb. 20, 2010.

“It’s a dreamland,” said senior Sumitra Chhetri, 17. Her day, she added, is Sept. 11, 2008.

The strange thing is that most of the club members have never even seen Bhutan.

About 675,000 people live in the poor, mountainous nation that did not own a passenger plane until 1980. The king decreed a policy of Gross National Happiness in the early 1990s to promote his people’s well-being amid economic development. His policy, which also aimed to deter political unrest, required citizens to embrace Buddhism and speak Bhutanese.

But the Hindu minority, mainly farmers with roots and a language from neighboring Nepal, had lived in Bhutan since the 19th century. Still, those who chose not to accept the king’s definition of happiness had to leave.

For nearly 20 years, U.N. camps in Nepal housed 108,000 Bhutanese refugees in bamboo huts. Years of talks on repatriation went nowhere. Camp schools were established, with lessons in British English. Finally, in 2007, a dozen countries agreed to take the refugees. By 2013, 60,000 will have settled in the United States.

The children, who either were brought out of Bhutan as babies or born in the camps, formed their club at David Douglas. But they don’t want to limit membership. “They push out there and invite everyone to come and participate,” Downing said. “They would love it to have Somali or Vietnamese students joining the club.”

On a recent Friday in Room 179, a discussion of future fundraisers ran long because, Downing said, “they don’t like to take votes. They talk and talk and talk until they reach consensus. It’s a leftover from living in the refugee camps. When I’ve asked them to take a vote, they say, ‘But then someone will be unhappy.’ So they keep talking.”